News & Announcements

Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) welcomes Walter E. Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and Susan N. Herman, president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), this fall as part of the CALS Speakers Series. The events will be held at CALS Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Avenue. The Speaker Series is free and open to the public,

Dozens of Little Rock residents will join in patriotic acts of service to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks during the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance. Volunteers will be doing beautification projects and visiting with veterans, joining hundreds of thousands of citizens across the country in this American tradition.

Volunteers will arrive at the VA in North Little Rock at 9:00 a.m.

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) is celebrating Tim O’Brien’s classic The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories centered on the Vietnam War, as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program and is seeking to record oral histories with Arkansas Vietnam War veterans for a project of the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

Who: Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) has announced the title for its annual Banned Book Writing Contest and Crazy Free Books giveaway.

What: The 2019 Banned Books Writing Contest is inspired by Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, which has been challenged in the U.S. due to some readers’ perception of the “violent and explicit” nature of some of the book’s content.

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) will host New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean (The Library Book, The Orchid Thief) on September 28 to give the 2019 Fred K. Darragh Jr. Lecture, part of the CALS Speaker Series. Orlean will take the stage at 6:30 p.m. at CALS Ron Robinson Theater,

The Central Arkansas Library System’s (CALS) Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is hosting its annual genealogy workshop on Saturday, July 20, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the CALS Ron Robinson Theater in Library Square, 100 Rock Street. Theater doors will open at 9:00 a.m. The program is free and open to the public; there is no registration for this event.

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) is announcing a new name for the Arkansas Literary Festival: Six Bridges Book Festival. Named for the six bridges that connect the downtowns in Little Rock and North Little Rock, the festival will have a new focus, bridging communities and bringing people together. The library will actively solicit input from a variety of demographic groups with the goal of offering a more widely appealing festival.

The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) is a recipient of a $14,900 grant to host the NEA Big Read: CALS. An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.